Five Ranks

The Five Ranks (Chinese: 五位; pinyin: Wuwei; Japanese: goi) is a poem consisting of five stanzas describing the stages of realization in the practice of Zen Buddhism. It expresses the interplay of absolute and relative truth and the fundamental non-dualism of Buddhist teaching.

Origins

The ranks are referenced in the Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi. This work is attributed to the Chinese monk Dongshan Liangjie (Japanese: Tōzan Ryōkan), who lived during the end of Tang Dynasty, as well as two sets of verse commentaries by him. The teachings of the Five Ranks may be inspired by the Sandokai, a poem attributed to Shitou Xiqian (traditional Chinese: 石頭希遷).

The work is highly significant in both the Caodong/Sōtō and Linji/Rinzai schools of Zen that exist today. Eihei Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Sōtō School, references the Five Ranks in the first paragraph of one of his most widely studied works, Genjōkōan.Hakuin integrated the Five Ranks in his system of koan-teaching.

Ranks

The Five Ranks are listed below with two translations of the original poem, one by Miura and Sasaki on the left, and the other by Thomas Cleary on the right, followed by commentary and analysis: